Stillwater by Nicole Helget

    Stillwater by Nicole Helget.
                                          Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Adult Fiction.

 
  Clement and Angel are born as twins, but live very different lives. Clement, a sickly boy, grows up in the local orphanage. Angel, the girl baby, is adopted by one of the wealthiest couples in Stillwater. Life for neither is easy.

  In this historical fiction, the mid 1800’s in the Minnesota area come alive through the adventures of  characters including a trapper, a nun, a Native American woman, and the twin children.  Rich with history, detail, heartbreak, humor, survival, and longings for love, the journeys of these early settlers grabs readers and brings us along for the unforgettable ride.

  The sentences are finely crafted, if sometimes quite lengthy. The research she must have done on trapping, medical care, and  clothing paid off richly in the believable details. The voices of the different characters ring true in the ways that she portrays their dialogs.  The book is laugh-out-loud funny in several places. I particularly enjoyed the running joke about Texas being annexed and the trappers not knowing the meaning of "annexed", but thinking it sounded both interesting and terrible!

  Five years of living with these characters may seem like a long time, but one reading is much too short.  Hopefully, Ms. Helget will continue writing! Check out her previous award winning works, The Turtle Catcher and a memoir, The Summer of Ordinary Ways.